There are many tragic stories that highlight the abuse and exploitation of Singapore's migrant workers. But underlying them all is a basic, structural problem: the workers' inability to speak for themselves and be respected as individuals.
Many factors drive the current trafficking industry, but its fundamental root is human poverty. To address this means to tackle the structural inequalities of our globalised world through 'pro-poor' growth and social inclusion.
Anti-trafficking efforts will fail as long as states and citizens continue to frame the victims of trafficking as criminals and security threats. Only a comprehensive and coordinated approach will sustainably reduce human trafficking.
Antiblack racism underwrites the contemporary movement against “modern-day slavery.” The anti-slavery movement is haunted by the specter of racial slavery even while it feeds off it parasitically.
Are we learning from the past or exploiting it? It is easy to obscure the similar economic rationales and incentive structures, as well as the participation of ‘legitimate’ enterprises and institutions, in both trans-Atlantic slavery and contemporary trafficking in humans.
If we are to have any chance of addressing trafficking, we should work towards the elimination of labour recruitment fees; advocate for a global minimum wage; and look at ways of criminalizing the knowing or reckless use of the services of a victim of trafficking. Español
Current anti-trafficking measures are weak because of a lack of inter-agency cooperation combined with a prioritization of national over human security.
Extreme exploitation is a structural problem, not a problem of human nature. Unless we deal with the ‘root causes’, which I locate in inequality, then it will continue. And global inequalities are growing.
Two recent ‘studies’ have attracted a lot of international attention. Each presents incredibly flawed findings. And these studies matter.
New abolitionists often attribute trafficking in certain areas to ‘cultural attitudes’. In doing so, they not only explain away the legacies of European and American colonialism. They also falsely differentiate between exploitation in some ‘bad’ parts of the world and similar practices in their ow
As trafficking becomes increasingly conflated with slavery and forced labor, there is less and less agreement amongst international organisations on the precise definitional boundaries of these terms.
Let’s stop giving the architects and beneficiaries of an increasingly neoliberal world order a platform on which to parade their moral condemnation of ‘slavery’, and focus on efforts to transform the meaning of ‘freedom’.
